Chris Rowbottom’s Conspiracy Theory

Roland Browne

Last Friday I received an extraordinary email from Chris Rowbottom, the ABC’s sports reporter and, for much of the two year saga around the Macquarie Point stadium, its lead reporter on the issue. His reports have shown a consistent bias towards supporting the stadium, boosting arguments for it and marginalising and diminishing those against it, or not bothering to report them at all.  Indeed, Chris Rowbottom is best described as pro-stadium and his reports have repeatedly shown a lack of objectivity that is meant to be the key feature of ABC reporting.

His lack of impartiality on this story is so pronounced that in a recent meeting with the head of Tasmanian ABC News, Emily Bryan, Richard Flanagan detailed examples of Chris Rowbottom’s ongoing bias where there should be none.

All of which makes Chris Rowbottom’s email even more interesting.

In his email to me of 28 March 2025, Mr Rowbottom outlines a series of questions, the cumulative implication being that there was some sort of conspiracy between Nicholas Gruen, myself, Richard Flanagan and Shamus Mulcahy, the effect of which, were it to be believed, would to be to damage Dr Gruen’s reputation.

These are serious matters then.

Pointedly, these questions arrived just two days after Dr Gruen’s damning evidence against the stadium process to the Public Accounts Committee of the Tasmanian Parliament.  He suggested the MPDC was hiding the truth of actual costs of the proposed stadium and implied that the KPMG report underpinning the financial case was untruthful and unreliable.

Here’s some of Crikey’s report on Dr Gruen’s explosive testimony:

“KPMG tried to dictate how a government body should assess the case for a new stadium in Hobart, omitted obvious inclusions that would have undermined the case for the stadium, and made some bizarre assumptions, independent economist Nicholas Gruen has revealed in evidence to the Tasmanian Parliament.“

You can read the Crikey source article here:

That’s the sort of testimony the Tasmanian government would very much like to see discredited.

In the two years of this extraordinary public debate in which Mr Rowbottom has been a prominent reporter on this story and I – as Mr Rowbottom points out in his email – the leader of the principal anti-stadium opposition group, he has never once contacted me for my group’s opinion, an opinion shared by 59% of Tasmanians.

Until last Friday.

Chris Rowbottom’s email asked me for answers to a series of questions framed in such a way as to undermine that damning evidence given by Dr Gruen against the stadium. It’s what the NSW police used to call “verballing”.

I am publishing Chris Rowbottom’s email below in full, along with my answers, because it is important for Tasmanians (and other interested observers) to understand that a significant aspect of Chris Rowbottom’s reporting on this issue has for two years been frequently and sometimes strongly biased in favour of a proposal that threatens extraordinarily damaging impacts on all Tasmanian lives and Hobart’s heritage.

As you will read, the sum of his questions is bad journalism drawing on unfounded premises in an attempt to suggest a sinister motive on the part of Dr Gruen in meeting with us. From these numerous unfounded premises, a conspiracy is implied. But for what purpose?  And who does such an invented conspiracy benefit?

In this debate about a stadium costing $1 billion+ (and rising), that may well bankrupt the state if built, it is regrettable that Chris Rowbottom has not interrogated the government over its stadium proposal with the same vigour with which he seems to wish to denigrate Dr Gruen; but it is wholly in keeping with his long-term bias evident in his reporting and non-reporting on the issue.

On 27 March 2025 Dr Gruen told Crikey there’s a broader problem in public policy and decision making in matters like this.  He said:

“There is no-one in the system whose job it is to get to the truth. Rather we have a ‘for’ and ‘against’ position and they fight it out in front of an audience of partisans. As this system reaches its end point it’s no-one’s job to seek or speak the truth. Ultimately the Westminster system has been slowly drowned by the party system and media imperatives.”

In the context of Chris Rowbottom’s evidence-less attack on Dr Gruen, it’s meant to be his job as an ABC journalist “to get to the truth”, rather than kill the messenger.  His mission is not to promote the stadium, which his reports have too often done, but to get to the truth about the stadium, which his reporting has for two long years failed to do.

Not the least irony about the Rowbottom conspiracy theory is that Dr Gruen’s report outlined a position different to my own or to that of Our Place. It describes how the government could find a pathway to build a stadium, including at Macquarie Point.  But it also makes it clear that the government is not on that pathway, but a very different one that will prove destructive and very costly.

A reminder that Dr Gruen was engaged by the Premier to prepare an independent report.  This came about in the wake of the Liberal’s disastrous state election result in March 2024 in which the Premier’s stadium policy cost him his majority (no less than Brad Stansfield, the Liberal Party Svengali saying so).  The price of support for his now minority party to achieve government from the anti-stadium Jacqui Lambie Network MHAs was the commissioning of two independent reports.  One report looked into the state’s troubled public finances, which was done by respected economist Saul Eslake, and one looked into the proposed stadium’s cost, which was done by Dr Gruen.  It is notable that Mr Eslake has recently endorsed Dr Gruen’s report.

Chris Rowbottom’s email, and my response, follows.  His words are in italicised bold.

From: Chris Rowbottom <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, 28 March 2025 11:59 AM
To: Roland Browne <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
Subject: ABC Media enquiry – Gruen report

Hi Roland, Chris Rowbottom here from the ABC.

I hope you are well.

I have some questions regarding the Macquarie Point stadium report compiled by Dr. Nicholas Gruen.

• Dr. Gruen has updated the ‘stakeholder consultation meetings’ section of his report to show he met with yourself, Shamus Mulchay and Richard Flanagan, in Melbourne, on April 16 2024. Can you confirm you met with Dr. Gruen on this date?

Together with Richard Flanagan, I met with Dr Gruen not in Melbourne in person, but via Google Meet on 16 April 2024.  Shamus Mulcahy was not part of that meeting. Both Richard and I were in Hobart. Dr Gruen was in Melbourne.

Dr Gruen was the first person on behalf of the Tasmanian government to consult with me or any local resident or community group about the proposed stadium.  He sought a community view about the stadium, its location, the planning process and he sought information about the overall picture, including opposition to the project.  My contribution to the meeting was to provide information, as was Richard’s.  Dr Gruen was professional in his questions and in his approach.  He was respectful when querying the validity of some of our points.

Dr Gruen was commissioned to write an independent report – not a government report, nor an AFL report.  He is to be commended, not condemned, for seeking input from civil society about this massive project.

• If so, did you meet with Dr. Gruen individually, or as a group?

See above.

• Were you aware Dr. Gruen was in the process of helping to craft the reports guiding principles when you met with him?

No.

Your question seems only to exist to imply improper behaviour that never happened.  The word “craft” has a pejorative connotation, suggesting some conspiratorial activity.

Nor do I have any idea what the “guiding principles” are that you refer to.  There is no reference in his report to “guiding principles”.

• Draft ‘guiding principles’ for the report were provided to government by the JLN on the same day you supposedly met with Dr. Gruen. A revised version of these guiding principles were provided to government the next day. Did you in any way assist Dr. Gruen in the crafting of these guiding principles?

No.

Your questions are the first time I have ever heard of any “guiding principles” in relation to Dr Gruen’s report.  And again, I reject your pejorative question.  At no point did I discuss with Dr Gruen his brief, his terms of reference, his engagement or his so-called “guiding principles” or anything like that.  Nor did Richard.  I had nothing to do with his engagement, or the arrangements for his work.  That was a matter for him and the Premier.  Ours was a meeting where he asked us about community opposition to the stadium and the surrounding processes, from our point of view.  I cannot recall either of us asking him any questions.  We answered his questions.

I remember that soon after that meeting, I commented to Richard Flanagan that I had no idea what approach Dr Gruen was going to take with his report into the proposed stadium’s cost and Richard agreed that neither did he.

• Are you aware that your supposed meeting with Dr. Gruen was not disclosed in the final report provided to government, which was also the report that was made available to the public?

No.

I never examined that part of his report. I was interested in his analysis of the economic issues surrounding the stadium, that it was to cost over $1 billion, that the project had been mismanaged, and his reasoning.

I note Dr Gruen also did not record in his initial report a meeting with AFL CEO Andrew Dillon on 12 June 2024.   What conspiracy can you conjure of that undisclosed meeting?

• If so, did you raise this with Dr. Gruen at any stage?

How can I raise what I don’t know?

• Are you aware a version of the report, available via Dr. Gruen’s personal webpage, has since been updated to show the meeting took place?

I was aware of none of this until your questions arrived in my email inbox on Friday.

I have not followed and I have no reason to follow or view Dr Gruen’s web site or later iterations of his report.  I first read it when it was released back in January.  After I received your email, I located a copy of the report on his web page.  That was the first time I had viewed Dr Gruen’s web site.

• Given your prominence as an anti-stadium campaigner, and as the head of the ‘Our Place’ group, do you consider it appropriate to have met with Dr. Gruen in the 24-hour period in which he was revising the reports guiding principles and weeks before his appointment was made public?

It was entirely appropriate that we met with Dr Gruen.  He is an independent and globally-respected economist, and he was engaged by the Premier of this state to write an independent report on the costs of the stadium.

In seeking to write an independent report that sought to look at the question independently, it is to Dr Gruen’s credit that he was seeking all points of view about the stadium – from the AFL CEO’s through to ours.

Only in seeking to damn me, Dr Gruen, Richard Flanagan and the anti-stadium movement, have you seen fit to elevate my standing.  But it begs a question: if I were so prominent why is it, in two years, that you have never before solicited any comment from me on the stadium and its many various scandals and controversies?

In any case, your question is again based on a false premise with a pejorative connotation.

Though it is tedious to repeat, I feel I must reiterate that Dr Gruen’s engagement, and its terms, were not discussed with us at the meeting and were not our business.  I was grateful for his decency and wisdom in seeking out our point of view which, though entirely ignored by the government and mostly ignored and dismissed by the ABC when you are reporting, is nevertheless the same opinion shared by 59% of Tasmanians – double the number that voted for the Labor Party last election.  And that opinion is No Stadium.

Thanks for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.

Cheers

Chris.